A former 40 year Atheist analyzes Atheism, without resorting to theism, deism, or fantasy.***If You Don't Value Truth, Then What DO You Value?***If we say that the sane can be coaxed and persuaded to rationality, and we say that rationality presupposes logic, then what can we say of those who actively reject logic?***Atheists have an obligation to give reasons in the form of logic and evidence for rejecting Theist theories.

Friday, May 22, 2015

SJWs Prepare a New War On American Rights

"Last month, the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman reported that backers of same-sex marriage laws will shift their efforts, now that it appears that courts are ready to impose a constitutional right to state recognition of those relationships. The big activists behind the legislative and court fight will start taking aim at other laws, especially those which allow for dissent and choice on participation in such events. The idea is to “protect people from prejudice” on the basis of sexual identity and orientation:"

"The new effort, Freedom for All Americans — a $5 million-a-year campaign over the next five years — is predicated on the fights around gay marriage, which played out state by state until reaching the Supreme Court in a fight that, advocates hope, will legalize same-sex marriage nationally.

The idea behind FFAA is to eventually get a major federal nondiscrimination bill that protects people from prejudice based on sexuality and gender identity."

Like all things Leftist, the title is Orwellian and means the opposite from its claim. It is really a thought-crime law intended to push morals out altogether.

" On the surface, this “Freedom for All” slogan sounds innocuous, almost like motherhood (to borrow a quaint notion). Who would ever support discrimination? But this is not your grandfather’s (another quaint notion) Civil Rights Act. Because that old notion of civil rights was back in the days when the First Amendment remained intact for all to enjoy. …

One of the coordinators of the project, hedge fund manager Dan Loeb, told The New York Times that pushing for these laws is “critical in order to change understanding against gays.” In other words, the laws themselves are supposed to lead to a change in the public attitudes. Can laws really do this?

Notwithstanding the awkward construction, Loeb’s statement is loaded. To claim that more anti-discrimination laws are “critical in order to change understanding against gays” basically reveals that the professed purpose of these laws is coercive thought reform.

Laws intended to change how individuals think—about anything—require enforced silencing. If the “Freedom for All Americans” meme is about freedom (which it’s not), then it’s only about negative freedom. That is, freedom from “discrimination.” Freedom from “hate.” Which basically gives carte blanche to those holding power (ultimately, the state) to define and cherry pick whatever “discrimination” and “hate” may mean before granting whatever due process is left over for the accused.

So laws of this sort, hiding under the fig leaf of “anti-discrimination,” will give the state the power to police speech and behaviors."

"What would have happened had we carved out this rather large exception to the First Amendment in, say, 1945? Had we handed the government the power to determine which speech was “hateful” and which was allowable at that point, would the civil rights movement succeeded as it did? Or would government have simply jailed people for upsetting others through their speech, imprisoning them for “hating” America as it was at that time?

For that matter, consider the anti-war movement that followed that era, in opposition to the Vietnam conflict. How would that movement, with its “America – love it or leave it” counter-response, have unfolded if the federal government decided that it was “hate speech” directed against the military? That could be considered a fair description of a significant amount of that rhetoric at the time.

Some will scoff at that hypothetical, but it actually did take place – fifty years earlier. The Sedition Act of 1918 did precisely that at the end of World War I, and the US prosecuted people for their dissent to the war. Railroad tycoon William Edenborn was arrested for scoffing at the idea that Germany could threaten the national security of the US in much the same manner as others do today about radical jihad in the Middle East."

The continuing destruction of Constitutional rights and liberty values is the natural outcome of AtheoLeftism. Atheism focuses on the destruction of social standards which are not its own, situational (personally adjudicated by the elite Atheist), and therefore totalitarian. The suppression of the Other is being forced currently by anti-triggering and anti-privilege warfare being not only encouraged but enforced in major universities, where diversity is only skin deep - literally. For a movement in which dogmatic narrative is supreme, diversity in thought is seditious to the narrative. Diversity of thought, therefore, must be destroyed. And first to go is freedom of speech.

Actually the very first to go has been the teaching of actual history, where free speech played an important role in the pursuit of liberty. But liberty for all is not the objective; liberty for the elite at the expense of the Other is the objective, with the Other now defined as immoral (even in thought) under the new morality which the elites are intent upon codifying into laws of persecution.

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"This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it."Thomas Jefferson, dedicating the University of Virginia

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Compendium of Rational Principles

Most people claim to be rational. But few have any idea of what that entails. Here is a list of articles that discuss the principles of logic, rational thought and related topics, such as evidence, truth and wisdom: